Nintendo offers Sadness to Wii U owners

Back when Nintendo first announced the Wii, in order to mollify the hardcore masses it showed off Sadness, a game presented in a melancholic, mature tone. Eventually, the game became vaporware, and because of how promising it once looked — and its unfulfilled destiny of proving there is a place for the hardcore gamer on the Wii — it became the Wii’s most famous vaporware until it was canceled. Now, the game is being resurrected for the Wii U.

The premise of the original game was extremely unique: the player assumed the role of a woman in Ukraine before World War I, tasked with protecting her narcoleptic, schizophrenic, blind, nyctophobic son. Like another Wii success targeted at the hardcore audience, Mad World, Sadness was to be presented in black-and-white to foster the melancholy, but as we all remember, the game never made it to release.

Aside from losing a mature game — something the Wii sorely needed — Sadness was also said to use the Wiimote in an actually interesting, waggle-free way where the controllers would control the character’s hands. When developer Nibris shut down, Sadness — an appropriate title for a studio shutting down — went along with it. Now, indie developers HullBreach Studios and Cthulhi Games are picking up the IP, and will aim to finally develop and release one of the Wii’s most famous what-if games.

Speaking with Nintendo Life, the studios revealed a few details about the game, such as that they’re going to stick with the Slavic mythology, and the new title will likely be built in Unity. Perhaps most strikingly, the new game will shift to 2D, and include RPG and puzzle-based mechanics (they are indie developers, after all!) that didn’t seem to be in the original.

Cthulhi Games revealed that the development duo are waiting for formal approval from the old developers. However, they did state that if approval is not granted, the team will simply change what legally prevents them from going ahead with the project, and continue with development. The game is being targeted for a 2016 Wii U exclusive release date, but strangely enough, the Wii U may not even be around by then.